Pre-internet, collectors tended to be far more reliant – dependent even – on the catalogue that was written in their own language. Buying and selling was limited to the relationships with dealers you knew, and the auctions you attended were those nearer to home. I’m generalising but you get the picture. Move on to the […]
Publications
SOFICH, so good
I recently acquired a very nice collection of pre-1940 Chile that had been collected by SOFICH and cross-referenced by Scott. It clearly shows just how much room for expansion there is by collecting using this specialized work. The SOFICH catalogue is published by the Chilean Philatelic Society (Sociedad Filatelica de Chile). It is a lavish, […]
Part 20, Part 20, wherefore art thou Part 20…?
It is now ten years since Stanley Gibbons printed the fourth and current edition of their ‘Part 20’ South America stamp catalogue. And the separate ‘Part 15’ that covers Central America was last published in 2007. It looks like these are the final editions of these heavily referenced catalogues. Stanley Gibbons business has gone through […]
Bookshelf Essentials Part II – The Central American Newsletter
Although The Mainsheet covered all twenty republics, its focus was primarily on South America. In 1980, under the editorship of Bernard Davies, The Central American Newsletter was launched as a sister publication to The Mainsheet. Bernard edited until his death in 1985 when Mike Birks took over the helm. The CAN ran for twenty years, […]
Bookshelf Essentials – The Mainsheet
If there is one thing philatelists are not short of it is reading material. Decades of book publishing has produced a wealth of literature on every subject imaginable and each month brings a swathe of new titles. Coupled to that, society magazines, articles, catalogues and the multitude of websites and forums and, well…you get the […]
Book Review – Introducing Venezuela’s Escuelas Stamps by Williams Castillo
Before we get to the content, I should point out that the beauty of this book is the author’s skill for taking a complicated subject and making it very simple to understand. There are countless philatelic books and articles that undertake to enlighten the reader on less complex issues but end up making things far […]
Scott Specialized adds another 67 listings to Venezuela
It’s taken a while but Scott is now recognizing Venezuela’s postal fiscals (or postage and revenue stamps) in the 2017 edition of its Classic Specialized Catalogue. This bumps up the number of stamps listed during the classic period to a further 67 items, all of them now prefixed under an “AR” code. AR1 through to […]